WHERE DO NEW WORDS COME FROM?

by

Robert Scheutz

CONTENTS

0 INTRO 3

I BASIC CONCEPTS

1 Definition 3
2 Lexical Institutionalization 4
3 Typologies 5
4 Motivation 5

II CLASSIFICATIONS

1 Shortenings 6
2 Combination forms 6
3 Lexical Phrases and Conversions 7

III RELEVANT AREAS

1 contemporary history 8
2 postmodern literature 9
3 technology 10

IV BIBLIOGRAPHY 11

0 INTRO … from usage.

Language and words as its basis are tools to communicate meaning.
Language is the key to successful cultural and social living which depends on exchanging (encoding and decoding) meaning. Therefore new words are assigned to refer to new meanings. New words and especially coinages (invented, totally new terms) appear in the emerging fields of society: in the televised contemporary history, in (counter)culture, in advanced technology and even in daily smalltalk.

′McJob′, ′artsy′, ′daisy-cutter′, ′MIDI′, ′emoticon′, ′carjacking′ or ′cyberspace′ to name just a view recent examples, show the great variety of new words. Due to the complexity and the on-going developments this paper makes no demand to giving a complete description. The attempt is to analyse basic concepts and further to sketch relevant areas of neologisms (dictionary-approved new words).

I BASIC CONCEPTS investigating neologisms

1 Definitions

In order to the major question of this paper, it′s important to define clearly what "new words" are - "a new word is a form or the use of a form not recorded in general dictionaries". (Algeo 1991: 2) The crucial condition for the inclusion in dictionaries is frequent usage. A dictionary which is a source of neologisms is the Oxford Dictionary of New Words. The editor, S. Tulloch defines a condition: "[…] whether or not the general public was made aware of […] a new word is any word, phrase, or meaning that came into popular use in English or enjoyed a vogue during the eighties and […] nineties." (Tulloch. ODNW 1991: v)

The lexiographical procedure seems to be quite important in defining neologisms. An example by D. Crystal gets things straight (cf. Crystal 1995: 132). As mentioned in the introduction the basic purpose of new words is to fill representational gaps new meanings or new mental concepts open. One type of new word is nonce words (from the 16th century phrase ′for the nonce′, meaning ′for the once′) which are produced to solve communication difficulties: Somone who wants to describe excess water on a road uses the word fuddle - meaning something bigger than a puddle but smaller than a flood. The act of creating the word wasn′t intended, but directly produced - made up for the nonce. Going further, an attentive journalist makes the first ′written usage′ of the word. In consequence other newspapers use ′fuddle′ too and within weeks it is part of the common spoken language. Now the lexographical procedure begins: New-word-registers are refering to ′foodle′ . Within years there are enough written citations to get into the major dictionaries, then the nonceword fuddle becomes a neologism, a new word approved by major dictionaries. There are other ways of creation and other lexographical procedures, but this example shows simply how a new word emerges to official English. (cf. Crystal 1995: 132)

Back to the criterion of neologism, as the statement of S. Tulloch indicates frequency (range and share of the texts) and coverage (various contexts) are essential for the inclusion. R. Fischer lists three further features (cf. Fischer 1998: 4) which concern language acquisition: availability, familiarity and learnability. "Available words are known in the sense that they come to mind rapidly when the situation calls for them" (Richards 1974: 69-84), which means that words are directly unambigously embodied into the neurolingual system. Familiarity is comparable, but it focuses on the psychological-history (frequency and point in time) of aquired words. Learnability describes the difficulty in learning neologisms.

2 Lexical Institutionalization

[...]